Amazon AI lead shares goals for company's healthcare services

Taha Kass-Hout, MD, former and first-ever CIO for the FDA and a senior leader of artificial intelligence at Amazon, detailed how the tech giant is using AI for its healthcare services in a recent interview with STAT.

A core component of Amazon's healthcare strategy is to support clinicians, according to Dr. Kass-Hout.

"I hope we see that with AI we're finally getting to understand what patient has a disease, rather than what disease a patient has — and truly start personalizing care to that level," Dr. Kass-Hout told STAT. "From a patient perspective and consumer perspective, AI is going to empower them, and for providers and healthcare systems, it's going to augment clinicians and bridge gaps."

Dr. Kass-Hout also provided an update on how healthcare companies are using AWS' EHR-mining software Comprehend Medical, which launched in November 2018. The software uses natural language processing and machine learning to scour patient health records for information that can help physicians improve treatments and hospitals cut costs.

"One of [Amazon Web Services' customers], Change Healthcare, is able to do better prediction of whether an [insurance] claim is going to be denied or not," Dr. Kass-Hout told STAT News. "At Beth Israel [Deaconess Medical Center in Boston], they are looking at how they can predict availability of beds once the patient is discharged from the operating room and how they can fully optimize their resources on their busiest days."